kitchen dragon @draco@kith.kitchen

I made this cashew-based, miso flavoured #vegan breadspread the other day. Turned out great, will make again: https://darebee.com/recipes/miso-spread.html

That feel when your #breadbaking timing was off and you can't bake it yourself and let Significant Other do it, but then you're anxious that they will forget or leave it in too long because they're overworked and sleep-deprived and thus forgetful.

It turned out just right and very tasty.

Note to self: Spouse knows her way around the kitchen, you *can* entrust her with stuff.

Baked rye and wheat sourdough bread yesterday night. It turned out soooo good. Two or three slices just with salt and butter are a wonderful breakfast.

OK, I ended up trying a version of Eggplant Parmesan, and it went straight from "never tried before" to "make me again".

Good morning! According to our meal plan, today is "try a new recipe" day. Since the wife is on boarding school dity all weekend and gets food at work, I basically have complete freedom in the kitchen.

I have no clue what to make. Just now, I am perusing my usual recipe sources. I will want something filling, no expensive ingredients, and since tomorrow's recipe already features lentils, I think I will want something without them for a change.

The pizza was delicious, though. And the pizza stone I gifted the wife with a few years ago was totally worth the investment. It elevates our pizza game by several levels.

Me at the store: "Uh, I feel like having pizza today, but that frozen pizza is kinda expensive for the mediocre taste. Pre-made pizza dough? Nah, I can whip some together fresh, from scratch, in no time."

Me at home: "This is why I don't get around to anything, but a femme's gotta eat!"

I tried vegan sukiyaki inspired by this recipe yesterday.

https://youtu.be/OdNqWcUdm6I

My alterations:
* There was some tempeh in the fridge that needed to be used up, so I used that instead of tofu. I fried the tempeh.
* I didn't have sake, so I used water instead for the sauce.
* I used olive oil for frying.

All in all, it's a make me again, although the sauce is probably tastier with sake.

I made vegetarian ravioli from scratch on Saturday. Froze half of the batch, ate that today. Homemade pasta is a decadent amount of work, but it was worth it.

So yesterday I found out that my stainless steel frying pan doesn't get enough appreciation.

That raised the question: What kind of pans do you - fellow kitchen dwellers - use for what?

I tend to just grab a non-stick pan as default. I will admit that cast-iron pans scare me a little; I'd be afraid of making mistakes with cleaning.

Adventures in making paneer: I realized that I need more acid and heat than my paneer recipe asks for, and I wondered whether the milk I use might be more processed than milk available in other parts of the world. (I always use the cheap standard milk from the supermarket, it's homogenized, pasteurized and "extended shelf life".)

The microwave paneer I tried today required some patience until I could get the milk to curdle, and on top we had a power outage when I was in the middle of it.

#MealPlanGenerator

The idea:
* We have three lists of favorite dishes: winter, summer, and soups. (There's some overlap between winter and summer dishes; the distinction is there to account very roughly for seasonally [un]available ingredients.)
* The generator randomly picks a dish for each day. Wednesday is our soup day.
* it then prints the dishes into a LaTeX file with nice formatting, so we can print the list and stick it onto our kitchen door.

Today: Tinkering with #LaTeX and #python so I can generate a meal plan for the next two weeks.

The wife and I had this idea last autumn, first as a way to plan our shopping better (and not have to run to the store every day), and then we appreciated that this brings more variety to our dinner table.

I'm nearly there, all that's missing is the actual writing-to-LaTeX part. #ProgrammingForBetterEating #MealPlanGenerator

Idk, for me, including people's dietary requirements as far as I'm aware of them and as far as it's within my abilities should go without saying.

Another funny food thing: A fellow singer from my choir has celiac disease. So last time we had a get-together with cake and all, I made a gluten-free cake.

People: "Wait, you have to eat gluten-free too?"
Me: "No, I just want to make sure B. can eat this cake, too!"

And now I'm suddenly craving smoked tofu and I have none in the house.

Don't know if this rant was preaching to the choir here. Ask me anything about plant-based cooking!

I like tofu, if it's prepared as tofu, not meat replacement.

What I don't like is the way people just toss it in a dish where they would throw in meat otherwise. Some dishes don't even need that, e.g. if you already have a rich creamy sauce. In other cases, tofu needs a different preparation.

Doing tofu justice is, IMHO, an art unto itself.

Also, if you *want* meat alternatives, tofu is not the only one.

So I was at a family celebration last weekend and there were, like, 3 vegetarian people in a crowd of ~20. It always surprises me when I find myself in a small minority food-wise, and also how many meat-eating people just have no earthly clue about vegetarian cooking. Maybe that's because I do it every day and I don't see how it's hard.